


NCIS: Scales of Justice

by mtac_archivist



Category: NCIS
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Not Episode Related, Not a Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-19
Updated: 2006-11-19
Packaged: 2019-03-02 06:40:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13312584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mtac_archivist/pseuds/mtac_archivist
Summary: NCIS has a case that moves into X-Files' area...and beyond.





	NCIS: Scales of Justice

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Jessi, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [ MTAC](https://fanlore.org/wiki/MTAC), an archive of NCIS fanfiction which closed in 2017. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after August 2017. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator (and this work is still attached to the archivist account), please contact me using the e-mail address on [ the MTAC collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/mtac/profile)

  
Author's notes: Written before Kate was shot, the team has to deal with a Mad Scientist and his affect on a team member.  


* * *

The door to Abby’s lab almost didn’t open fast enough. Special Agent Gibbs strode through it, missing the sliding panel by less than an inch, already barking orders. “No one knows about this. Say nothing on the phone, nothing by email, nothing by semaphore. You don’t talk to anyone about it without my clearance. You, Ducky, and the team are all that know about this. I wanna know who, I wanna know how, and most especially I want to know how to fix it! Got me?”

“Yeah, Gibbs,” came her automatic answer, “But what is the ‘it’ we’re talking about?” But he had already spun around and left the room. She turned to SA Dinozzo, who was carefully carrying a copier paper box into the lab. “Tony, what’s going on? I heard someone say that someone was shot, and then everyone stopped talking! Where’s Kate? Where’s Magee? Who got shot? What is GOING ON?!”

Tony set the box down on her desk and made ‘slow down’ gestures. “First off, no one’s hurt. Well, not like you’re thinking. Second, Gibbs is worried that the wrong sort of people are going to take an ‘official’ interest in this. So minimize the possibility of intel leaks. And third, you have to see it to believe it. So there wasn’t even a point of telling you what ‘it’ is until you could see ‘it.’” At that, he lifted the top off the box and showed the technician what was in it.

She leaned forward to find herself face to face with Agent Todd…an 11-inch tall Agent Todd. At first she thought it was a pretty good likeness for a doll, until the ‘doll’ gave her distinctive half-smile and said “Hi, Abby.”

\--------------------------

Gibbs made his way past the morgue, spoke briefly with Dr. Mallard, and continued on to interrogation. He glanced through the one-way mirror where Magee was interviewing two techno geeks. It only took him two seconds of listening to determine that he had no chance of understanding the subject matter, but he trusted his investigator to be able to summarize a translation for him later. He stayed long enough to gauge their body language, and estimated that they were honestly cooperating with his agent. Then he walked off to make some very special phone calls.

\--------------------------

After Tony left, to work on a long list of tasks assigned by Gibbs, Abby tried to make her guest comfortable. She stacked chemistry manuals until she made a perch at a comfortable sitting height, then she leaned down to keep her eyes at Kate’s level. Then she asked “So what happened?”

“Well, we were closing in on Doctor Featherstone.”

“Right,” Abby supplied, “the guy we suspected of ripping off the Navy research lab.”

“Yes. We had his office surrounded, Tony at the back, Magee and I covering the side door, and Gibbs was going in through the front to confront him. Suddenly, a hidden door opened, and someone came out. I was the closest one, so I stepped in front of him. It was Featherstone, I pointed my gun at him, and he started to surrender. Or at least, I thought he did. He had something in his hand, and as it pointed to me, I was suddenly…” She gestured at herself.

“But, are you alright?”

“Yeah, I feel okay. A little weirded out, of course. And whenever Tony picks me up, he makes the expected jokes about picking me up.”

“Now, that’s odd.” Abby frowned in thought.

“What’s odd, that Tony’s an ass?”

Abby shook her head, “No, that’s a given. But he shouldn’t be able to pick you up. I don’t know what this guy did to you, but there are serious issues surrounding shrinking.”

“What issues?”

“Well, it depends on how you were shrunk. If they just took out the space between the atoms and molecules in your body, you’d get smaller but you’d weigh the same as you always did. And if they took out 99 percent of the atoms of your body, you’d weigh about 1/200th, but your brain would be about 1/200th as smart.”

“Um…I don’t FEEL any dumber? Would I be able to tell?”

“Kate, if your brain was the size of a rat’s, you’d be about as smart as a rat. Maybe a little more, your brain structure is more complicated, but your thought processing and memory would be severely limited. Trust me, you’re fine. But that just makes the mystery more mysterious.” They were both quiet for a moment, thinking, when suddenly Abby raised her head. “You say you were on the side with Magee?”

“Yes, I sent him to one side of the door we knew about, I took the other.”

“And you got hit. I guess that means Magee’s feeling really guilty about letting you down?”

“Oh, he never stopped apologizing. But when Tony was just going to stuff me into a pocket to bring me back, he hunted up the box, said I’d be more comfortable that way.”

“So,” Abby smiled, “you can use this to your advantage for the next 20 years.”

Kate smiled back until she remembered that she might be pint sized for the rest of her life…it put a damper on plans to torment the junior agent.

They both flinched at the sound of the lab door opening, but relaxed when they saw Ducky enter. “I’m told, Abigail” he was saying, “that you have something in your lab that even I would find unusual. Of course, ‘unusual’ just means things that are outside of the ordinary. So even if it was something I was personally familiar with, there’s still the chance that I would recognize it as being outside of the….” His voice trailed off as he noticed that Abby was playing with a doll. A very familiar looking doll. As he drew closer, the doll smiled at him. He was actually able to recognize the smile first, and when he realized the doll was looking back at him, he realized he owed Jethro an apology. “Oh, my. ‘Unusual’ doesn’t even begin to cover it, does it?”

Once he was brought up to date, Mallard pointed out that Abby had undersold the mysterious aspects of the situation. He asked Kate to pick up a pencil, which she did, wielding it like a Number Two Lance. “Now, the human body is designed to take the best advantage of muscle mass and bone structure. For the mass your body has now, you should have enough leverage to rip yourself apart by exerting your muscles.” Todd dropped the pencil with a start, and he rushed to reassure her. “No, no, my dear. If you haven’t done yourself an injury just standing, walking and breathing, you’re in no danger. Now, speaking of mass, do you feel cold?”

“Oh! Dumb me!” Abby exclaimed, searching through her desks for something to use to wrap up the tiny agent. “She’s got, like, 1/200th of the mass she had, but with a 36th the surface area.”

“Right, Abby,” Ducky continued, “with the way the human body is designed to rid itself of waste heat, you should be freezing in this environment.”

“No…no I feel fine. Actually, maybe a little warm? Does that make sense?” she asked, looking up at the medical examiner.

“Frankly, no it doesn’t.” Abby and Kate both stared as Ducky started pacing. Finally he turned around. “Katherine, do you still have your gun?”

\--------------------------

In the ballistics room, they set up a test fire of the tiny agent’s tiny weapon. Ducky was adamant that it be done remotely, with great care against accidental discharge. Kate unloaded it, Abby opened a rubberized clamp, and they arranged the pistol. Kate was willing to fire the weapon manually, but agreed to run a string around the trigger. She agreed because Ducky started to lecture on the math comparing the strength of the shrunken bullet charge versus the strength of the shrunken barrel metal. At the least, Ducky expected the blast to pop the gun open like a blossoming flower.

As Ducky and Abby argued about how far the round should penetrate the test panels, and the possibility of finding the bullet, Kate stretched out a foot of dental floss, wrapped it around the trigger, then loaded and chambered a round. She stepped back and yanked the floss.

The gun exploded. Not fired, not burst, it exploded, fully as loud as it had ever sounded when it was full scale. Pieces of the weapon, and the clamp that had held it, spread in every direction. Kate felt shrapnel rip through her left arm and leg, and was thrown off the testing workbench. 

\--------------------------

Tony caught up with Gibbs as he returned to the examination room. “Got no good news, boss. Aside from the two guys we got down in Interrogation, no one who was familiar with the project seems to be around anymore. Two dead, four disappeared, and Featherstone made his escape through Kate.”

“Through US, Dinozzo. We all were there to arrest him, and we all failed to stop him.”

“That’s what I meant, boss. I meant only…”

“I don’t care what you meant, Dinozzo. Now find me Featherstone. Go make sure every law enforcement agency we have contact with knows we want this guy. And see if Kate has any ideas.”

“On it, boss.”

\--------------------------

Kate woke up to find the face of Mallard looming over her. Nothing hurt, but she was sure it’d start as soon as her body realized she was awake. She lay perfectly still, and asked “How bad is it?”

“I’m afraid to say, my dear, that your blouse is fairly ruined.” As he talked, he picked her up and moved her back to the workbench. “The skirt is probably a bit more showy that you’re used to, now, and the nylons have gone to stocking heaven.” Kate knew that Ducky was unlikely to joke if she were at death’s door. She slowly raised her left hand to look it over. The blouse sleeve was nicely shredded, but the skin beneath it was unmarked. She flexed her hand, moved her leg. She sat up. She stood up. Amazingly, she was whole. “I don’t understand,” she asked the doc; “I felt stuff enter my arm, my leg. I got blasted off the table! I fell, what three body lengths to the ground? What happened?”

“I don’t know. I would suspect that the shrinking process made you more resilient, but that wouldn’t explain why your clothes are torn.”

Abby interrupted just then. “Damn, Kate, you kick ASS!” She held a mangled lump of metal in a pair of tweezers. “Your slug made it about 2/3rds as far as a full size weapon’s would have, but that’s probably because it was tumbling. And the slug is full size! So even at pint size, you could shoot a bad guy if you had to!”

“Sure,” Kate commented dryly, “I just need to convince him to hold my round and bang on the end until it went off.” She gestured over to where the pistol had been.

“Oh. Yeah.” Abby shut up. Drake got everyone to move back to the lab.

“Are you thirsty, Katherine?”

“Um, yeah. As a matter of fact, I didn’t notice it until you mentioned it, but I’m very dry.” Abby got a bottle of water from the minifridge by her desk, poured a tiny bit into the lid and handed it to the miniagent. It looked like a big gulp in her hands, as she sipped at it.

“Ducky, I thought about giving her some water before, but is that a good idea? I mean, she’s shrunk. Will her body be able to absorb the giant water?”

“First off, Abby, it won’t hurt her. If she can’t use it, the body will just pass it along and she’ll get rid of it. Second, I’m fairly sure the body will find a way to make use of the normal-sized water.” Kate interrupted him to ask for more.

“This only made me thirstier. Can you pour me some more, please?” Abby carefully refilled the makeshift cup, and then found a knife. While Kate was drinking, she cut off the top of the bottle so that she could just dip for more rather than wait for someone to help her. Abby turned to Ducky again.

“But how can you be sure she can use it? Won’t the molecules be too big for her?”

“Hmm. Ask yourself this, dear. If she can’t use things that are too big, then what is she breathing?” The both turned to look at the woman on the desk. She’d discarded the cup and was gulping up handfuls of water from the bottle. When the level got too low to reach, Abby trimmed down the plastic until she could reach it again. And again. And again. When she finally had enough water, she stepped back. A few ounces of water sat in the remaining portion of the original bottle.

“Whoa. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I didn’t realize I was that thirsty.”

“I’ll say,” Abby agreed. She snagged another bottle from the fridge and stood it beside the first. Looking between the two, Kate realized that she had somehow managed to drink down a volume of water that was greater than her whole body. Ducky nodded, unsurprised.

“I suspect,” he commented, “that you haven’t lost anything in this shrinking. Somehow, your mass has been shunted to another phase, or dimension. You remain connected to it. That water you just drank mostly went to wherever the rest of your body is. The part of your body that is here absorbed it, and passed it on to your missing pieces. The wounds inflicted on you were only marginal because they could only reach a fraction of your tissues. So where you should have gotten a wound, you only got 1/200th of a wound, and your body moved all the injured tissues away from here. They’re either healing or already healed in the Phantom Zone or whatever.

“I would guess that when you fired your weapon, the energy released was that of the entire round, both here and wherever the rest was sent.”

“So to get back to normal size, I just have to be fired from a gun. Wonderful.” Kate sat down on her reference book perch again, with her head in her hands. Ducky tried to think of some information to perk her up again, but failed. He made a promise to be back later, and left.

Abby looked at her friend for a minute, then started to smile. “Hey, Kate, want to change into some thing that hasn’t been ripped to pieces?”

Kate managed a half smile. “You have something in a size negative 20?”

Abby returned a much bigger smile. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

\--------------------------

Tony entered the lab, scanning for his height challenged partner. Abby and Kate were both missing. He thought he saw her on the desk, but it was only her Goth doll. But he didn’t see her anywhere else. As he stepped to the desk, the Goth doll turned around.

“Whoa, Kate, what happened to you?” He bent down to look closer: pale face, blood red lipstick, heavy (for her scale) mascara, and clothes to match. He stood back up, smiling. “You’re like the Goth Keebler Elf. We need to get you an Easy Bake Oven.”

“Get me some hemlock, too, Tony,” she retorted, “and I’ll be glad to make you something.” 

“Get some Viagra, instead,” Abby suggested as she came in. Both of her coworkers stared at her suspiciously?

“Abby, if there’s one thing I’ll admit about Tony, it’s that he doesn’t need any Viagra.” Kate glanced up at Tony, who nodded once to her. But she couldn’t resist adding: “Not yet, anyway.”

“Right, but think about it. If you gave him a really big dose, we wouldn’t see him again for a month.”

“Nyahh, nyahh, Abby,” said Dinozzo, “So, what’s with Kate, here? Goth Barbie now available?”

“As a matter of fact, Tony, I did get a custom made Barbie Goth costume from a boyfriend. When Kate’s clothes got torn up, I thought it’d make better protective coloration. If she looks like a doll, people’s eyes will see a doll.”

“Kate’s clothes got torn up?” Tony’s eyebrows rose. “Why, did she resist you playing dolly with her hair and makeup?”

“Yes, that’s exactly right. I wanted to dress her up, and she ran. She got as far as the edge of the desk, and begged me to leave her alone.” Abby leaned forward and lowered her voice as she described the scene to Tony. “And as I menaced her with one hand, the other snuck up behind her and GRABBED ‘ER!”

“Oh, she did not!” Kate interjected, “She put me in a drawer and said ‘try this on.’ She wasn’t even in the room!”

“Shush!” Tony ordered her, then turned back to Abby, “You were saying….?”

“Well, once I had her in my hands, I peeled her like a banana. I had a handful of naked NCIS agent. She kept wiggling and squirming, I almost dropped her. That’s when I discovered she was ticklish! So, I-“

“Will you two knock if off!” Kate shouted.

“Hey!” Tony shouted back, “Well trained dollies don’t speak unless someone pulls their string.” With that, he swept up the box she’d ridden in before, and covered her on the desktop. Once more, he invited Abby to continue, his voice deep and throaty. “Go on….”

\--------------------------

Gibbs entered the interrogation room forcefully. “Making progress, Magee?” His abrupt entry disturbed the technicians, but the NCIS agent hardly blinked. 

“Yes, boss, I am. The original research was meant to tag a target’s molecules with a type of radiation that could be tracked from satellite. Turns out that it-“ His voice trailed off when he noted that Gibbs had already departed. He turned back to his interview subjects. “So, what would you guys need to remove this radiation tag from a subject?”

\--------------------------

Kate paced back and forth under the box, listening to her coworkers flesh out a shrinking woman fantasy. She got more and more irate as time went on, until they started speculating on searching out tattoos on ‘her’ body. In frustration, she kicked a staple remover under the box with her. It tore completely through the side of the box and bounced across Abby’s desk. The conversation stopped on the instant.

“Um, you okay in there, Kate?” Abby asked as Tony slowly lifted up the box. She’d completely forgotten the humiliation of the previous conversation as she looked at the direction the desk tool had taken.

“How’d I do that?” She walked over to where it came to rest against the computer. It had impacted the keyboard hard enough to wedge into the plastic. Abby pulled it out. She looked down at the surprisingly strong agent. She shrugged.

“I guess there’s a way for you to access the strength of your full size, from whatever dimension it’s hiding in.” She and Tony watched as Kate hopped down onto the desk chair, then down to the floor. Then she walked to the side of Abby’s desk and started to push against it. Her friends stepped back, but the desk never moved. She shifted her stance, and pushed again. Nothing happened. She sagged against it. Abby knelt down. “Maybe you can’t do it if you think about it. Maybe it has to be automatic or unconscious.”

Tony looked thoughtful for a second. Then he knelt down as well, and reached towards his partner. He carefully arranged his fingers, and managed to goose both of her breasts and under her miniskirt with the fingers of one hand. Kate gasped, spun, and grabbed his hand. Without hesitation or thought she set her feet and yanked. Tony slammed face first into the desk. He moaned and sank down to the floor as Abby and Kate gaped.

“Kate….” Abby whispered, “you….you ROCK!”

Kate walked up to Tony’s face, which was now at her level. “Tony, I’m so sorry.”

“Do-don’t be, Kate. I’d say the theory is proven.” He rolled to one side and gently probed his jaw. “Good to know you can take care of yourself.” 

“Kate!” Gibbs shouted from the lab door. “Haven’t I told you not to play too hard with Tony? We might need him some day.”

“I’m fine, boss,” Tony replied, popping to his feet. “I’m just evaluating my fellow agent for field duties.” Gibbs walked up to Dinozzo until they were face to face. 

“And how is she, Special Agent Dinozzo?”

“Fit as a fiddle, boss. I’d gladly have her as backup.” Gibbs looked him in the eye for a second, then pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. 

“You’ve got blood on your lip.” He and the other agents turned as the doors opened again. Magee ran in. 

“Okay, I know what’s happened to Kate.” He stopped and looked at his superiors. “What happened to Tony?”

“Kate happened to Tony, Magee.” Gibbs answered, “As usual. You’ve got two minutes to summarize the geek speak.” Magee nodded, then stepped to the white board and drew a 3x3 grid.

“Okay, everyone knows about Hollywood Squares, right?” He pointed to the middle of the grid. “Imagine that each square is an atom of Kate’s body. Now there’s someone here at center square-“

“Paul Lynde.” Gibbs supplied. Magee stopped as everyone turned to stare at Gibbs.

“Um,” Magee asked, “would asking who Paul Lynde is come out of my two minutes?” He took Gibbs deadpan stare as an answer. “Okay, anyway, the project was intended to use a type of radiation to mark targets on an atomic level. Instead, it sets up a matrix effect.” He pointed to the grid. “The effect makes an anchor atom, like the way the biggest celebrity is in the center. Everything around it, though, is pushed to a higher energy state and removed from what we tend to think of as the universe. So the Kate we see is kind of a puppet, with 99.98% of her body operating somewhere else. 

“But the interesting thing is, there are some indications that she might be able to access her ‘higher self’ in this form. She could be as strong as she ever was, with her original mass, weight could be either based on the fraction of her that’s here, or on her ‘real’ body.”

“That would make sense,” Tony contributed. “If she only had her normal strength, without mass, she wouldn’t have yanked me into the desk. She’d have yanked herself towards me.” Magee nodded.

“She may,” he added, “even be able to pull the rest of her self back over.”

“How?” asked Kate, in chorus with Gibbs, Dinozzo and Abby.

“Um…” Magee looked from face to face in his typical ‘deer-in-headlights’ look, “um, I don’t, I mean, they don’t, they didn’t.” He swallowed. “I don’t know.” Gibbs spun around. 

“And on that note, I called in some favors. I have two leads on possible locations for Featherstone: one from Leiter at the CIA, one from Mulder at the FBI.” He turned to look down at Agent Todd. Four field agents know about your condition that I trust NOT to leak it to some agency like the OSI that’ll put you under a microscope, or make you a special secret agent. You’re one of them. So, pick a partner, pick a lead, then you two get going.”

“Going?” asked Kate, “I’m going into the field?” She looked up at her superior. He smiled slightly and pointed to the other agents.

“You got two choices, Agent Todd. You can go with Dinozzo, or you can go with Magee. I’ll get the other location with whoever’s left.” Kate mulled it over. Then she made her choice.

“Magee blames himself for what happened. He would spend more time worried about me than Featherstone. We’d both be at risk.”

Gibbs nodded. “That’s what I thought, as well.” 

“I choose Tony. And the FBI lead.” Gibbs nodded and beckoned Magee into his wake as he swept out. He handed a sheet of paper to Tony as he passed, gave a thumbs up to Kate. 

After they left, Tony knelt down to his partner and stretched out a hand. “Going my way, partner?” She took a careful seat in his hand and he started out. Of course, after a touching moment of trust, he couldn’t resist pretending to heft her in his hand. “Have you put on a few grams, Kate? You’re not letting yourself go, are you?” Kate groaned as he hid her under his jacket.

\--------------------------

A short time later, Tony pulled over across the street from a seedy motel just off the interstate. He smiled as he took in the view. “You’re going to love this one, Kate. The cockroaches have to be this…” He turned to look down at where she was unwrapping herself from the seat belt. “Hold your hands out.” She spread her hands apart like gauging a trophy salmon. “Yeah, about that big. Thousands of them. Let’s go!”

“And to think, I chose you over Magee.” She shook her head, but Tony nodded. 

“Could be worse. Imagine being your size in a car Gibbs was driving.”

\--------------------------

Thirty miles away, Gibbs started to reach for his weapon. Magee noticed and finally shut up. “Sorry, boss.”

“Magee, no one blames you for what happened to Kate. Except you. Stop apologizing. Stop worrying about whether or not she’ll ever get back to normal. Stop wondering if Dinozzo is going to take her to Starbucks and force her to ask for an itsy bitsy teeny tiny latte just to see the look on their faces behind the counter.”

“Actually, boss, I never said anything about Starbucks…”

“Okay, so leave the worrying to me, will you!?”

“You don’t think Tony would...Do you?” Magee sat back, concerned but quiet. Gibbs smiled and shot through traffic.

\--------------------------

Dinozzo gave the clerk, Diane, his shiniest smile. She was unimpressed. But she did listen while he described his great need to glance through her guest register in his search for a fugitive from justice. She maintained a desire to see some sort of warrant. As he described the intricacies of justified pursuit and the requesting of bench warrants, he kept eye contact with her, but she felt his attention was aimed somewhere else.

Finally, he gave up, and walked out. He stopped and knelt down to tie his shoe, whispered something, and left. She thought she saw him hide something in his jacket, but there was nothing in the lobby for him to have picked up. She shrugged and returned to her novel.

\--------------------------

“I was so sure she was going to turn around and find me on her computer.” Kate passed the passkey to Tony by simply reaching up and dropping it down his jacket sleeve. He caught it with a flourish as he stepped around the corner from the lobby.

“You underestimate the Dinozzo charm, Kate. She may not have decided to grant me illegal access to violate her guests’ privacy, but she wasn’t going to turn her back on me.”

“Tony, if I ever get back to normal, and you start to tell me how irresistible you are to women? Just remember that I’ve been in your armpit.”

Tony shook his head. “And if you don’t, Kate, how many air holes should I poke in your shoebox? Now shush,” he whispered, “should be the next room.”

He lowered Kate to the ground and carefully approached the room door. Slipped the key in and gently unlocked it. He glanced around the parking lot, making sure it was empty. He nodded to Kate, who set herself at the corner of the door, then pushed as he turned the latch. The door swung open and Tony’s gun swept the room…the empty room. He quickly crossed to the bathroom, while Kate rushed in to look under the beds.

They found no person, nor any sign of occupation. Just as they relaxed, though, Kate pointed to the door connecting to the next room over. Tony moved to it, and reached towards the doorknob. Just as he touched the door, it exploded. Todd ducked under the bed as she saw her partner fly across the room.

\--------------------------

Gibbs finally shook his head at Magee. The search was in vain. Featherstone wasn’t in the warehouse. They turned towards the exit, and the car, and Gibbs holstered his gun to draw his cell phone. 

Tony didn’t answer. Gibbs actually turned to his passenger and warned him. “Hold on.” Magee didn’t think this was a good sign for the coming drive.

It meant Gibbs was planning on driving even worse than usual. If that was possible.

\--------------------------

Featherstone stepped through the remains of the dividing wall and stood over Dinozzo. Dinozzo was stunned from the explosion, and trapped under rubble from the explosion. The door was on him, and the door frame, and large bits of the ceiling.

“Very good, Agent. Featherstone remarked, “NCIS has gotten closer to me today, twice, than the FBI, CIA or OSI has in the last two years.” He raised the shrinking device to aim at the agent. “You just shouldn’t have come alone.” 

Kate braced Tony’s pistol against the leg of the bed, aimed it with her legs and pulled back on the trigger with both hands. The round took Featherstone in the leg. He spun around and dropped to the ground. She ran over and kicked the device from his grip. It flew and smashed to pieces against the wall. Another kick to his forehead dropped him like an uninflated tire. She left a tiny little footprint in his skin from the kick, and figured she had access to her full, adrenalized strength.

She then ran to check on Tony. He seemed to be having difficulty breathing. Kate tried to shift the door and rubble off of him, but nothing moved. She gritted her teeth, braced, and lifted the door as high as she could. If she couldn’t free him, maybe she could at least get it off him enough he could breathe until the explosion brought someone. She lifted with her knees, her arms, her back, straining to get the door as high as she could reach.

When she was as extended as she could get, she looked down and saw that Tony was clear. Then she noticed that she was looking down at him. 

She’d managed to regain most of her normal height, in the simple unthinking desire to reach higher.

Todd tossed the door to the side and knelt beside Dinozzo. 

“Tony, are you okay?” He rolled his head and opened his eyes. 

“Kate. You’re back to normal.” The two smiled at each other. “You owe Abby a Barbie costume.” He closed his eyes again as Kate realized she was completely nude.

\--------------------------

Magee entered the motel room with a set of coveralls and handed them to Kate. She took them under the bedsheet wrapped around her and started dressing. She continued making her report to Gibbs.

“Then, the paramedics started getting Tony ready for transport, and two FBI agents arrived to take The Doctor into custody.”

“And you let them?” Gibbs asked.

“Frankly,” she replied, “between being worried about Tony, and relieved about my growth spurt, I couldn’t have cared less about who got custody or credit.” She turned to zip up the coverall, then dropped the sheet and faced her supervisor again. Gibbs seemed about to argue with her when she continued, “Besides, I kicked him in the forehead. The full strength of my normal kick applied to” she held her fingers up about a Barbie-shoe apart “this much of his skull. I think we should let the Fibbies play for his medical bills for a while.”


End file.
